Archive for March, 2009
Local Sports Gallery Updates
by Photog on Mar.27, 2009, under Events, Frisco, News
One of the fringe benefits of shooting for several local papers is being able to photograph our many talented High School teams in fierce competition for the top position in their various disciplines. Texas, the inspiration for, and setting of, Friday Night Lights, takes its High School sports very seriously and I have the great good fortune to capture many of these hard-fought contests for local publication. Check out the Sports Gallery for regular highlights of the latest games. The most recent addition is the March 20th challenge featuring McKinney North vs. Liberty High’s Girls’ Soccer, held at Prosper High.
This is that time of year when the days are starting to get longer and the games are being held with some actual sunlight (a more forgiving time to photograph fast-moving events). If you have a team (or team member) you would like professionally photographed, I am available as a “hired gun” to cover your event.
Randy Travis Gallery Posted
by Photog on Mar.24, 2009, under Events, News
Saturday, March 21st, we made the obligatory trek to Fort Worth and Billy Bob’s Texas (the “World’s Largest Honky Tonk”) and our favorite place to take visitors to Texas), where we thoroughly enjoyed the performance by Randy Travis. Read the review on DFWRocks.net
As always, Billy Bob’s is a lot of fun and the only improvement I would make is to the sound system, which needs some drastically improved delayed feeds to bring the same quality of sound to the “cheap seats” as those who sit up close receive. If you’re sitting in the first two sections, the sound is always acceptable. Your cue should be the location of the Mixing Booth. If you’re near the engineer, you have a good shot at getting good sound. If you’re too far away – maybe not.
Anyway, Randy put on a great performance of his classic hits, some new material and a few gospel standards to the thorough enjoyment of the crowd. If you’re a fan, check out the small gallery of his show.
Gallery Updates
by Photog on Mar.18, 2009, under News, Projects, Recent Projects
March 24, 2009: Finally finished processing all the images from our junket through North Texas earlier this month. As a result, three more galleries are updated with new images. The Texas gallery had updates from Gunter, Whitesboro, Gainesville and Collinsville (one of my favorite towns – also has a delightful new cafe on the square – check it out!). Also, the Desolation and Architecture galleries have updates as a result. Mosey on over and peruse the images if you have a fondness for Texas’ unique brand of Americana.
March 18, 2009: Just added a new model gallery from this last weekend’s shoot. Deanna’s Gallery is all Schoolgirl shots, some done on location in and around the Plano DART station (one of my favorite areas) in the very cold hours of sunrise this last Sunday. It was mighty brisk (more so if you’re only wearing a tiny skirt, bustier and fishnet stockings…) and we didn’t get the sunrise light I was hoping for, but we are very happy with the results.
A quick stop for coffee at Starbucks (to warm us up), left at least three eyeballs rolling around the tables upon our departure (yes, Deanna was “in costume”…)
We finished up with some studio shots – and some of my favorite classic industrial hallway shots – and the results were spectacular. Deanna is really easy to work with, very professional and a phenomenal model. We have plans for some future themed work, so stay tuned.
Check out Deanna’s Gallery if you like the schoolgirl look (who doesn’t?)
March 10, 2009: Not only is it our anniversary (7 years!) but I have a new model’s gallery posted today. Kelsey Susan and I spent the better part of Friday evening shooting some killer shots at my Plano studio. Tall, very pretty and easy to work with, Kelsey was a delight in front of the camera. In addition to some gorgeous / edgy fashion work, we also added some new images to my Glamorous Apparitions gallery (Ghosts!) so take a look!
In addition, I just added two new images of downtown Frisco to the Frisco Gallery, commissioned by Frisco Enterprise newspaper. The hardest part was timing the shots to catch this particular stretch of local businesses with no cars going by. Wouldn’t you know that on this particular Sunday afternoon, the traffic would be particularly heavy…
Stay tuned – I’m editing dozens of images from this weekend shot in Gainesville, Whitesborough and Gunter as we wound our way home from an overnight getaway to the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma (where we saw Bonnie Raitt in concert and made the appropriate donation to the Chckasaw Nation’s building fund…
January 17, 2009: New studio shoot for Misty, a model I worked with in 2007, added to the Modeling / Fashion / Glamour galleries. Misty C, local Dallas area model and I worked late into the evening this last Thursday to create some stunning images for our portfolios. Due to the brisk weather (low 30′s) we specifically scheduled this shoot indoors. We did shoot a few spectacular images of Misty in an exterior stairwell, but not without having to spend some time thawing both of us out after (Misty more than me, actually). The studio shots came out great, with the best images (as with Jen’s shoot) done with only a custom made strip light for illumination, rather than the new Alien Bees strobes. We also had a lot of fun working with the “Orb” light I put together for these shoots. The Orb also turned out to be a useful source for adding “fill” light to several images.
Misty is a delight to work with and we had a great time shooting together, producing some gorgeous images in the process.
Misty’s 2007 series is at the top of her gallery, with the new images at the bottom of the page. Enjoy.
January 15, 2009: New model added to the Modeling / Fashion / Glamour galleries. Jen Dixon, local Dallas area model and I worked late into the evening earlier this week to create some stunning images for our portfolios. We specifically wanted to do a shoot with Djett, my 2008 SRT4, so I had it all cleaned, waxed and buffed to a high luster for the event. Unfortunately, mother nature was uncooperative and the temperature was somewhere in the low 40s after factoring in wind chill. This made shooting outside inconvenient at best and miserable at worst. We did get in a few spectacular shots of Jen and Djett, but not without having to spend some time thawing out Jen afterward. The studio shots came out great, with the best images shot with only a custom made strip light for illumination, rather than the new Alien Bees strobes. I found I preferred the acute lighting provided by a single, low-wattage light source to the even, predictable coverage from the big strobes and umbrellas. Hmmm…
January 6, 2009: For those who enjoy cars and motorcycles, a new gallery has just been launched with exactly that in mind. I’m toying with the idea of including all vehicles, but so far it’s just automobiles, with the future TBD. The inspiration for this gallery was a new project I’m working on for Frisco Image magazine on vintage cars and the men who have a passion for restoring them. This article focuses on two Frisco, Texas residents and their collection of classic cars. From Model T and Model As nearly a century old to a late model Ford GT (NOW we’re talkin’!), these men have accumulated what most of us can only dream of seeing, maybe touching… but likely never even driving – shining examples of the finest in American and European automotive engineering. Enjoy.
The Automotive Gallery is accessible via the main web page. Just click on the ’59 Caddy tailfin and you’re there!
December 12, 2008: Massive update to the Frisco gallery after spending a total of four freezing nights scouring the Frisco Square / Frisco City Hall area to record the festivities for the annual Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony and capture the synchronized, computerized Holiday Lights that bring new life to the complex each December. If you’ve never seen it, you owe it to yourself to take a drive to Frisco before the end of the year to experience this marvel of modern technology for yourself.
December 6, 2008: Partway through my latest project to photograph this year’s computerized Holiday Lights for the City of Frisco, I’ve added a few images to the Frisco gallery. Lurking around City Hall in a 20mph wind at 38 degrees is the order of the day for this image-gathering project.
This annual undertaking for several local photographers, to capture the definitive image of this monumental light show, continues to be interesting, since there are only so many different vantage points from which to capture the scene. Tonight is the Big Night, when the Christmas Tree is illuminated in an appropriate ceremony. Stay tuned for the results.
A new gallery has been added to the Commercial page for the Horses for Hope shoot, photographed in October for the December / January 2009 issue of Frisco Image Magazine. Take a look at the gallery for some moving images of this very worthwhile project.
November 29, 2008: It’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog, but that’s only because I’ve been too busy to give it much thought. I’ve been re-processing a lot of old images and updating both my local galleries and my galleries on Model Mahem and One Model Place. The Art, People and Construction galleries have been receiving regular updates and I’ve been re-processing some images on almost all of the modeling galleries, so snoop around to see what’s changed when you have the time. Some of the model galleries have been simplified, with a few images removed and header images created for all models, to personalize the pages.
November 11, 2008: Just updated the Sports gallery with a few shots from last week’s Frisco vs. Centennial game at Pizza Hut Park. While Centennial is typically the favorite in these games, last Friday’s event certainly started out differently with Frisco in the lead the first half of the game. I wasn’t there for the big finish, but I can tell you Frisco High was in rare form for the first half. Enjoy the abbreviated gallery at the bottom of the Sports page.
November 2, 2008: As a result of shooting the 2008 Gary Burns Fun Run yesterday, the Events gallery contains an overview of the event with twelve new images. The Frisco gallery has been updated with two images from this series as well. The turnout was amazing, leaving those who arrived barely in time for the start of the race with a parking dilemma. I wound up parked at the far end of the Pizza Hut Park lot and scurrying like crazy to make the start of the race…
October 14, 2008: One of my favorite pastimes is to head out on the Harley, or in my little road rocket and just meander until I see something I like. So that’s what largely makes up the Texas gallery. My friend and fellow photographer, Jose Artiles joined me this Sunday for an exploratory trip along the back roads of North Texas to see what we could find of interest (to photograph}. We made our way through Celina, Collinsville and Gunter, locating some spectacular places of interest along the way. The Texas gallery contains 30+ new images as a result. Enjoy!
October 11, 2008: Created a long-overdue Commercial gallery to display an assortment of my commercial work for local government, organizations, magazines and newspapers in addition to some commercial advertising shots. Included are some recently resampled images of Frisco and Nastia Liukin’s parade in Parker, Texas.
October 6, 2008: Substantial update today. I have re-processed a large number of images in the Necropolis Creep website, and updated several of the cemetery galleries as a result. For reasons I will never understand, I shot the Little Elm cemetery in 2007, but never created a gallery with the results, (could have sworn I had done that…) so I have just posted that project. Meanwhile, the New Braunfels, Tioga, Zion, Bethany, Edom, Hall, Oak Hill, Muslim, Hood, Oakwood and St. Thomas galleries all have updates.
I also separated the Sports and Events gallery into two separate pages to improve the load time. A new gallery for a football game I shot last Friday at Pizza Hut Park between Frisco High and Liberty has been added to the Sports page and a gallery for the Double Oven Cobbler festival is added to the Events page.
October 2, 2008: Additional images added to two modeling galleries. Nikki and Wendy’s galleries have been updated with a few enhanced images.
October 1, 2008: Additional images added to three modeling galleries. McKenna, London and Katerina’s galleries have all been updated with a few enhanced images as I experiment with a new treatment, rendering dramatic results. Check the bottom and top of each page for photos that are clearly different from the rest of the set.
September 29, 2008: New updates to the HDR gallery added after re-processing 15 or so images from various other galleries. Some new shots have been added of Frisco’s Central Park and the Frisco, People and Flora and Fauna Galleries also have new / re-processed images.
September 27, 2008: New updates to the HDR gallery added after re-processing 13 images from my Desolation series. Numerous homes, buildings and assorted detritus I’ve stumbled across in my travels throughout North Texas have found their way into these galleries and some delicate reprocessing has breathed new life into a select few of these captured antiques.
September 25, 2008: New updates to the HDR gallery added after re-processing some fashion photography from the last 2 years. Michelle, London and McKenna updates are posted here. Commentary and locations for all shots in the gallery are now updated as well and all actual HDR images are labeled.
September 22, 2008: Major update to the Frisco gallery and a new HDR gallery added. HDR images are a composite of 2 or more photographs of the same scene, each exposed for optimum detail in various elements of the image. The finished images are blended together to create a final, highly-detailed rendering of the original scene. My HDR gallery contains both true HDR images as well as digitally-manipulated images that create an HDR-like effect.
September 14, 20085 (happy birthday, Jadyn!): Updated the Texas gallery with a collection of images from obscure small towns around North Texas. Wizard Wells, Aurora, Ben Wheeler and Edom are a few of the towns represented in the recent additions. I’ll bet you didn’t know there’s a full-size reproduction of The Last Supper tucked away in a building along a back road in Texas, but It’s cleverly concealed and while I can’t tell you the location, I can tell you it has a fascinating history, hand-painted by two Italian artists recruited from Italy expressly for this multi-year project.
September 13, 2008: Updated the Sports gallery with a few select images from a football game I shot for the The Colony Courier Leader newspaper. The Colony High School’s Cougars were giving the R L Thornton Tigers a proper thrashing for the entire time I was there, which started with the Cougars receiving the kick off and running a 91 yard field goal. To find this particular gallery, go to the Sports page, then select the Events link and scroll up. It’s much faster than selecting the Sports link and scrolling down, as the Sports category is getting a little out of control.
September 10, 2008: Updated the Necropoliscreep site with 2 new cemeteries. One of our outings took us up to Whitewright, Texas, where we photographed some of the historic elements of the town as well as Oak Hill Cemetery, which is the resting place of the Kimbell family (of the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth) as well as a spectacular mausoleum erected for the Hubbard clan.
We also discovered the Hall Cemetery on our way through Howe, Texas that same day. If you like cemeteries, check them out.
September 8, 2008: Updated the People and Assorted Things galleries with a little project Jose Artiles and I finished involving my little Road Rocket, 2 generators, an assortment of lighting, 50 votive candles, a fog machine and an indeterminate number of extension cords – all in the parking garage of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Frisco, Texas.
Special Thanks to Bill Bretches, Shupi and Art at Embassy Suites, who made this all possible.
September 7, 2008: Updated Structures, Desolation and Texas galleries with a number of images from Whitewright and Howe, Texas. Some of my first HDR images are in these galleries. HDR is an emerging trend, wherein a number of exposures are taken of the exact same image and merged to create a High Definition version of the scene with more tonal range and detail.
August 28, 2008: Added Frisco Centennial at Pope John Paul II Girls’ Volleyball gallery on the Sports / Action / Events page
August 25, 2008: Updated People and Flora and Fauna page with one new image
August 25, 2008: Added Girls’ Volleyball and Jetski Poker Run galleries on the Sports / Action / Events page
August 23-24, 2008: Added, updated Nastia Liukin gallery on the Sports / Action / Events page
August 18, 2008: Completed the Ozzfest 2008 gallery – see my Rock ‘n Roll page.
